


Five of Seven

by lea_hazel



Category: Seven Kingdoms: The Princess Problem (Visual Novel)
Genre: 7KPP Week, Ambition, Canonical Character Death, Diplomacy, Extramarital Affairs, F/F, F/M, Family, Father-Daughter Relationship, Gen, Lies, Marriage, Past Relationship(s), Pillow Talk, Pre-Canon, Secret Relationship, Secrets
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-16
Updated: 2017-09-10
Packaged: 2018-12-26 05:57:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 3,739
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12052752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lea_hazel/pseuds/lea_hazel
Summary: I only managed five out of seven days of 7KPP Week in 2017.1. Allegra of Namaire (past relationship)2. Jiya of Jiyel (sacrifice)3. Felicity of Arland (dreams)4. Marguerite of Corval (present)5. Jacqueline "Jack" of Holt (growth)





	1. Past (Allegra)

She intended, still, to go through with it. 

Allegra had planned and plotted at least five years to get to this point, two whole years of scheming before she could even be considered as a delegate. Years since her name had first been put forth, fighting a ceaseless battle of backstabbing and rumor-mongering, just to hold on to that hard-won position. It was never secure. At any time she could be replaced by a new favorite or an old irritant. 

After all that hard work to win her prize, she had no intention of giving it up. And it galled her that people still thought to ask whether she intended to go through with it. As though she had ever begin anything she didn’t intend to finish. As though she didn’t deserve her position just as much as any other delegate. Even the people who knew her best weren’t immune. 

“How could you even ask that?” she said, dropping her brush and glaring at him over her turned shoulder. 

“I’m sorry,” he said, “I didn’t mean to upset you.” 

“You didn’t,” said Allegra. “And you shouldn’t be sorry for upsetting me, but for doubting me.” 

Isa pushed himself up to a sitting position, bracing on one hand. “When have I ever doubted you?” 

“Just now,” she said, reaching under the bed to retrieve her lost stockings. 

“That’s not what I meant at all,” said Isa. 

Allegra ignored him and focused on getting her stockings straightened out. 

“Allegra!” said Isa, almost angrily. 

She frowned at her stays. “I’ll never be able to get these done alone,” she said. “I can’t believe I let you talk me into this.” 

“We’re not going to get caught,” said Isa, “and besides, it’s not like we’re doing anything wrong.” 

They’d been over this argument already, and Allegra didn’t deign to grace it with a response. Even a man like Isard had to understand the value of reputation, sooner or later. However much he fought against it sometimes. 

Allegra got up and turned her back on Isa, tugging on her underskirt ineffectually to get it back into its proper place. “What did you mean by it, then?” she asked. “If I misjudged you so.” 

He sighed and deflated, sinking back down into the pillows. 

She turned around, but only to pick up her shoes. 

“Don’t be obtuse, Allegra,” said Isa, staring at the canopy above him. “It doesn’t become you.” 

“Excuse me?” she said. 

His eyes snapped to her and away, before he rolled over to get up. Coming up behind her, he took hold of her corset laces and said, “Brace.” 

She held on while he cinched her corset tight. 

“Thank you,” she said softly, but his hands hadn’t let go of her waist. 

Isa settled his arms around her, pulling her back against his chest. She could feel his breath against her ear. 

“You know what I meant, Allegra,” he said. “I’ve offered more than once.” 

She closed her eyes, but only for a moment. Twisting around, she turned in his embrace to face him. When he leaned down to kiss her, she blocked him with a hand. 

“I’ve turned you down,” she said, “more than once.” 

“Why?” 

“Because I intend to go,” she said flatly. “The summit is less than a year away.” 

“Allegra, I love you!” said Isa. 

She resisted the urge to touch his face and said, coolly, “I still intend to go. I won’t marry you, Isard. I don’t know why you thought I’d change my mind. I thought I’d made myself quite clear.” 

Isa leaned his forehead against her shoulder, pulling her close. 

A moment later she disentangled herself, pulled away and resumed dressing. He watched her in silence, but there was nothing she could do for him anymore. He could choose to believe her, or he could choose not to, but it was his choice all the same. When she’d got herself into some semblance of order, she paused with her hand on the doorknob and looked back at him. 

“Is this how you want to say goodbye?” he asked. 

Allegra walked over to him and kissed him, pulling his face down to hers by the collar of his rumpled shirt. Isard didn’t look any happier when she pulled back. She knew he wouldn’t. 

“I have to go,” she said. 

Isard didn’t say anything. 

She walked away, shutting the door quietly behind her.


	2. Sacrifice (Jiya)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written from the perspective of Jiya, the cousin whose elopement sets off the Jiyel background personal plot. Teo is a wholly original character.

Jiya was a coward, she knew that. She could dress it up as much as she liked, call it the rational choice, or say that discretion is the better part of valor. In her heart, though, she knew that it was simple cowardice. She didn’t want to be fighting a shadowy enemy, a distant threat capable of unknown cruelties to achieve unknown ends. She wanted nothing of it, she wouldn’t put her family at risk and she certainly didn’t want to take on the risk to her own person. 

After having come in tenth on the national exam, she couldn’t very well refuse to go. Not a month short of her departure date. Not after three years of intense preparations, regulated and paid for by the under-secretary for national resources. Jiya was a national resource, and had expended significant time, energy and gold to become one. Elopement, then, was a rational recourse for this profoundly irrational problem. A quick, quiet officiation followed by a rapid strategic retreat. 

Namely, a honeymoon. With her bridegroom. Her fresh husband. Her loving newly-wed husband. 

They were hardly returned from their romantic escape, and Jiya had only just managed to calm down her frantic parents and their many questions. There was barely enough time for her to get her head together and start repiecing a plan for her future, because the very morning after their return there was a letter lying on her dressing table, next to her morning tea. An irate letter from her great-uncle, informing her that his own granddaughter had stepped up to do the duty that Jiya herself had so callously derelicted. 

Her mind sorted rapidly through a mental portrait gallery of relations she hardly knew. In the heartbeat between lifting her teacup and touching it to her mouth, an image clarified in her memory. Her little cousin, a sweet and charming girl with more education than good sense. Jiya had sent her a present for her eighteenth birthday, not six months earlier. Of all the girls she’d known in her twenty four years, she couldn’t think of a single one less qualified to attend the Seven-Week Summit. 

She was, through Jiya’s actions alone, snared in a snake-pit that she was wholly unequipped to navigate. Jiya turned the letter over and over in her hands, watching a thread of morning sunlight glint off the gold of her wedding band. 

Just as her thoughts started to turn dismal, something blocked the sunlight from her Eastern window. A shadow fell over the table, the tea-tray, and the letter in her hands. Jiya looked up, and saw her husband standing over her. He almost certainly did not mean to loom. 

As if to prove her point, Teo pulled up a chair and sat across from her, hands clasped. 

Jiya tilted her head and regarded him silently. 

“Is something wrong?” said Teo finally. 

“Nothing,” she lied. “I got a letter, and the contents were… rather disappointing. That’s all.” 

He knew more about the circumstances of their hasty marriage than she was willing to talk about. She knew that, and he knew she knew. A fine mess she’d cooked for herself, and an even finer prologue to a life spent together as equal partners. Jiya knew that she would have to spill her heart to Teo eventually, but her worse nature was still determined to put it off as long as possible. 

She chatted idly for a moment or two, before her husband finally tired of her and stood to leave. 

Just as Jiya was turning back to her correspondence, Teo bent down and, much to her surprise, kissed her forehead. 

“Take care, my love,” he said. “I’ll be in the library all day, if you want to talk.”


	3. Dreams (Felicity)

She would not have thought to mention it, unless particularly asked. She hadn’t thought it a question, she supposed, hadn’t entertained any other possibility. 

As a Princess of Arland, Felicity knew that having children was imperative, was part of her obligation to the Crown and to her future husband. Why entertain any other possibility, when it was clearly out of the question? 

For her fourth birthday, her Great-aunt Eugenia gave her a beautiful doll, with a face and hands made of gleaming white Jiyel porcelain. Felicity dressed her in a white lacy gown, and every night she put her to sleep in a little bassinet that sat beside her bed in the nursery. Her nurses cooed over her when she played with the doll, and Felicity preened at their attention. Even her mother smiled to look at them, though her sister Constance was markedly less amused. 

When she was seven, her mother disappeared. No one explained to her where she went, except Constance, and no one would speak of it plainly. It was indecorous, she learned, to refer explicitly to a woman’s state of  _exclusion_. Felicity wanted to ask why it was a thing to be so ashamed of, if it was every woman’s duty to her husband and to God, but she knew that would only get her a stern talk from her governess. 

The baby was finally born, and a great parade was thrown in his honor, even before he had been named.  _One day that will be you_ , whispered a voice in her head, as she watched her mother and the baby being ferried along a broad lane in a carriage decked with flowers and ribbons. In the hail of curtsying and deportment, and never-ending demands, here was one way to be more than  _good enough_. 

She thought of it sometimes, during idle moments, on those last couple of weeks at the Summit. While she still had some time to imagine, before contracts and negotiations could demand what was left of her attention. She imagined what sort of children she might have with Zarad, what they would look like, what they would act like. Not that she had much time for idle fancies, and when she did, her daydreams were usually otherwise occupied. But she knew the subject would come up, sooner or later. 

“We’ll have time to think of that, later,” said Zarad when she first brought the subject up, having tired of waiting for him to speak first. 

“Do you really not want to talk about it?” asked Felicity. 

He shook his head. “I didn’t say I didn’t want to,” he replied, “but I’d rather have you to myself for a while longer.” 

Felicity was content with this answer, for a while. She didn’t speak of it further, not with him, not with Constance, certainly not in her letters home. She was careful not to ask her sister, though she’d often wondered, why in seven years of marriage she had never had a child. Perhaps she’d had a child and lost it, as their mother had, more than once. Her nurses had tried to hide the fact from Felicity, and were probably still under the impression that they’d succeeded. 

There were so many things that could go wrong, for a woman trying to bring a child into the world. She wasn’t afraid, not exactly. Still, a part of her selfishly wished that Constance would have gone through it first, could prepare her, could allay her fears. It was an unworthy thought, but one that still visited Felicity, now and then. Even when they’d finally decided that it was time, it still recurred to her. 

With a sudden intensity, Felicity wished she still had access to the Vail Isle libraries. Surely they would have a book on the subject, maybe more than one. A written source, one that would prevent her the embarrassment of finding someone to ask in person, to reveal her ignorance to. But there was nothing to it, and she could only try and be brave about it. She sent her maid to the Imperial apothecary, and waited. 

And waited. 

It was not as though she lacked for distractions. Felicity had been popular with the ladies of the Inner Court, almost from the moment she stepped foot off the ship that brought her to Corval. Social engagements dominated her days, and her empty hours were easily filled: with Constance, walking in the gardens, with Sina, who brashly demanded to be entertained, with her husband. 

With her husband, who never pressured or asked, never required answers where she could give none, never made her feel guilty or embarrassed. Never  _asked_  anything, even when it had been months with no sign of change. Her maids were watchful of her moods and of what she ate, and one morning one of them took pity on her and said,  _these things take time_. 

A year passed. The ladies of the court would mention, apropos of nothing, some friend or distant relation who had waited for so-and-so time before finally being blessed with a child. Sina would stare at her with big eyes when she thought Felicity wasn’t looking, and when caught at it she would act twice as rambunctious as usual, dragging her along by the hand to someplace where neither of them was really supposed to be. Even Constance tried to reassure her, with the soft pressure of her hand on Felicity’s arm, and a softly murmured  _everything will be fine_. 

Finally she snapped and ordered her maids brusquely to fetch the Imperial physician. 

“Your Highness,” the physician greeted her with obsequious formality. 

“Stop that,” she said sharply. “You’re not here to prance, you’re here to answer my questions.” 

“Yes, Your Highness,” he said. 

“ _All_  my questions,” said Felicity pointedly. “Honestly.” 

“Very well, Your Highness,” he said. 

“Do you understand?” she asked. “Tell me the truth, not whatever it is that you think I want to hear.” 

He did so, though he must have known she wouldn’t like it. She didn’t like it, truly, one bit. She almost regretted asking, not because the answers were terrible, but because they were so abominably vague. No, he did not know for certain how long it would take. Yes, it was rather longer than usual for a lady of her age and health. They would not know, truly know, until she finally conceived. There was nothing more he could do for her. 

Felicity dismissed the physician distractedly, her ill temper draining away almost as fast as it had come. She sat at her writing desk and looked at an unfinished letter to her mother that she had left off weeks ago. She got up and walked to the window, which was open and let in a sweet-smelling breeze. Constance would be coming soon. They had engaged to spend the morning together. She didn’t know what she could possibly tell her sister, but then she knew for certain there wasn’t anyone else she could better talk to, to sort out her feelings on the matter. 

Better to give up, she thought, looking out through the gauzy curtains. Better to expect nothing, hope for nothing, and leave alive the possibility of being pleasantly surprised. That was how she’d gotten through the years after Constance had left Arland, and before she herself was sent away. Expect nothing, and just maybe you’ll never be disappointed. But it was a sour taste to surrender a dream she hadn’t even known she’d been harboring. 


	4. Present (Marguerite)

It was an exceptionally foolish way to spend one of their last nights on the Isle, and they both knew it to be so.

It was not even as though they were going to be separated. Though they’d never spoken on the matter after that first time, it had been silently agreed between them that Marguerite would be returning to Revaire at the end of seven weeks. Not with Gisette, though, no. It was her younger brother whom Marguerite had fixed her sights on. She would return with him and had every intention of marrying the poor bastard as soon as could expediently be managed. Marguerite was under no illusions about the boy’s talents as a Crown Prince, nor of the stability of the throne he was meant to ascend to.

And so, although they were not to be separated, both Gisette and Marguerite were conscious of the shortening of their time. The future was uncertain, had always been uncertain. This was just as true in the Princess’s homeland as it had been in the Corval inner court, Marguerite’s traditional theater of war. Although she considered herself especially well-equipped by her experiences in the Imperial court, the treachery in Revaire was of a very different sort. No need to be self-deluding about it when they could all be dead tomorrow.

Most days, she would say this added a certain thrill to life that would otherwise be lacking. Most days.

Nights brought a different perspective. Even a night such as this one, when she was not left alone to be preyed upon by her own wandering thoughts. Especially a night like this one, considering the company she kept.

Gisette had a way of reading what was on her mind. It was more than a bit unnerving. Now she leaned forward, braced on a forearm, and pressed her mouth to Marguerite’s neck, whispering in her ear.

“Don’t think about the future,” she said softly, the warmth of her breath stirring fine hairs on her neck. “We can make do of the sweetness of the moment, while it lasts, can’t we?”

Marguerite rolled on her back and tilted her head in her direction. Gisette’s pale eyes shone in the soft, enveloping darkness of the room. “While it lasts,” she echoed.

Gisette brushed an imaginary strand of hair from her face. “We fared a great deal better than each of us might have hoped,” she said quietly.

“I know,” said Marguerite. “I know we did. I’m not greedy, Gisette.”

The Princess laughed, the sound so low it trickled like a chill through her bones.

“Not in the daylight,” she added, “at any rate.”

“Which is why,” said Gisette, pillowing her head in the crook of Marguerite’s neck, “we must make the most of these moments. We shan’t have many of them when we’ve left this place, curse it. Don’t spoil the moment by thinking about it too much.”

Marguerite knew only one sure cure for thinking, though, and so she curled her arm around Gisette and pulled her close, her fingers lightly trailing down her back. She felt her laugh again, close against her skin, like the tremor on the skin of a drum, every sound as soft and light as the movement of a dragonfly’s translucent wings. And she scolded herself, almost immediately, for such an inexcusably sentimental line of thought, quashing it mercilessly. The quiet and the dark had been fine for her all the years of her life. They would suffice now, too, if only because they had to.


	5. Growth (Jack)

“This is the most I’ve missed my father, I think, since he’s been gone.”

They were sitting in the gazebo together that morning, not usually a location which Jack would have chosen to spend much time in, not even when she was in the company of the Princess. This day, though, seemed to call more for quiet conversation than the energetic pursuits that she was usually dragging Penelope on. It was a nice day, and they probably could have found just as much privacy in the garden maze, or out by the cliffs. And it wasn’t even as though Jack was scared of eavesdroppers, although that seemed to be the national sport on Vail Isle.

She just wanted to talk.

“I think I met him once,” said Penelope.

Jack raised an eyebrow, a habit she’d picked up only in the last few weeks.

“I don’t remember it very well,” the Princess went on. “I was very young at the time, only just old enough to be in attendance at… some function or another. I think I spent most of it trying to hide behind my mother’s skirts. I got scolded for it later.”

Jack made a face. “Scolded for being shy of strangers? How old were you?”

Penelope shrugged. “I don’t remember exactly. The room was full of strangers, and all I wanted was to sink into the floor or become invisible. Every time a new name was announced I felt myself growing an inch smaller. I’d never seen so many strange men in my life.”

Jack snorted. “Wish I’d been there, I’d have snuck us both out easily enough. We could have gone to hide in the stables.”

Penelope smiled at this. “Then we’d both have gotten scolded.”

“Aha,” said Jack with an impish grin, “but they could only scold us if they catch us.”

“Did your father truly scold you?” asked the Princess. “He was ever so nice to me. He didn’t mind that I was too shy to talk, or that when I spoke my voice was too low to hear. He told me he had a daughter, about my age…” She trailed off, lost in memories.

Jack turned suddenly quiet. “Yes,” she said. “That sounds like him.”

“I miss home,” said Penelope, “but at the same time, I’m almost afraid to return.”

“Will they be angry that you didn’t secure an alliance?” asked Jack, her face creasing with worry.

Penelope shook her head. “My mother didn’t even want me to go, to begin with.”

“I don’t know what will happen to me,” said Jack. “I don’t know if they’ll be as forgiving of my failure.”

“Oh!” said Penelope, her eyes round. “But you haven’t failed at all!”

“I was sent to secure an alliance,” Jack pointed out. “That means marriage, right? I don’t think there’s a single soul in this castle I could convince to marry me, at this point.”

Penelope shook her head vigorously. “That’s not what it means at all. You have been creating alliances, all the time. Everyone you meet likes you, you know. I’ve seen it.”

“Surely it can’t be as simple as all that,” said Jack with a frown.

“Why would you think something was simple,” asked Penelope, “just because you were good at it?”


End file.
